Integrated circuit production has been migrating from 200 mm to 300 mm substrates, or wafers, for several years. The move allows the creation of up to 2.5 times more chips on a single wafer and can enable chipmakers to lower the cost of producing the increasingly powerful semiconductors demanded by today's Information Age applications. However, the inventors believe that not all semiconductors will ever be produced on 300 mm wafers. Although chip capacity is transitioning to 300 mm wafers, the inventors believe that 200 mm wafers will not disappear in the near future. Specifically, the inventors believe that fabs running 200 mm wafers may continue to be used at least for the indefinite future to fabricate a variety of devices, for example, specialty memories, image sensors, display drivers, microcontrollers, analog products, and MEMS-based devices. The inventors further believe that some chipmakers may desire to have a mix of chip production running 300 mm and 200 mm wafers on 300 mm and 200 mm tools respectively.
Thus, the inventors have provided embodiments of substrate carriers for multiple-sized substrates for use in substrate processing systems.